Cooking for yourself is money saving and nutritious. Why? As you pay more careful attention to value for your money you begin making better food selections. And, you gain in fun and added happiness through sharing food with family and friends.
Many people shy away from cooking at home because they think its all about slaving away in the kitchen, dedicated to the recipe and time and effort to this or that, etc. Its not. Cooking can be a joy as well as fast and frugal which does not mean cheap.
The Brainy Gourmet has been preaching this since the beginning. Being frugal is about value as in quality of product for your money and thus making your pantry work for you.
A chicken stock (pot of water with a chicken in it) can turn into any soup down the road of a M-F week. They key to stretching it out is that you don't add every thing you have plus the kitchen sink.
The idea is to create a rich stock that you can work with all week. From that stock you can make everything from a rich chicken soup with wide egg noodles to a creamy tomato soup with rice and even make it into a bean and pasta filled minestrone by Friday.
In this way, you are not a slave to recipes and expensive ingredients. You need only to use your intuitive sense of taste and that comes from experience, not talking years... just a couple of tries.
The other perceived 'obstacle' to cooking at home (for yourself) is the idea that you they have to have every item from the daily food pyramid on your plate every evening; that is just not true.
You don't have to have something green, something red, something yellow... or something with carbs, something protein plus something not. You just need to have two basic foods: a meat and or fish plus a side. As for veggies, leafy or not or a fruit, have either for breakfast or lunch or the later as desert.
When you can concentrate on just two foods i.e. meat and potatoes/pasta/rice or dumplings, you will find out that home cooking is brainy fun, frugal and ... simply brainy delicious!
*Note ~ When you make a soup stock (chicken, beef or vegetable), you must keep it clean/clear by straining out the meat/vegetable. Rice, pasta or other secondary ingredients (pre-cooked) are best added to individual bowls when serving. If you decide to turn your chicken stock into tomato soup, the same applies; remember, once tomato paste is added to the stock or stock portion, the stock will be a 'tomato' stock which can become the Friday Minestrone.
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